A self-reflection of my past self

I love creating, expressing myself in a creative way, though I am hindered by some fear inside of my own mind. I know I have potential to do something very creative that can blow away the minds of the crowd, but I cage myself in and let myself become scared of performing in front of people. This old fear of stage fright from my early childhood days has severely inhibited my growth and ability to develop confidence in my own presentation skills.

This is terribly inconvenient because I have habituated to always start battling with myself whenever I need to present or even stand up in front of a crowd. A horrible feeling, really… it’s like you’re killing yourself before you even stand on the execution table. You knock yourself down with all these visions of failure and worst case scenarios so much so that it starts showing in your physical state via sweating and shaking and freezing up.

Maybe I have some mental problems? haha, it might be so. I’ve cried as a kid whenever I had to present. The teacher even had to excuse me from presenting because of that… and that made me feel even worse because I felt isolated and different from the ‘normal’ kids that could do it. So then I cursed myself for being so weak and that made me cry even more…. and so the cycle continues… really counterproductive I say… but I did not have a positive attitude about myself as a kid… did not take criticism too well and was really sensitive because of that. I cried a lot and was nicknamed ‘crybaby’ or ‘mute’ because I couldn’t present ‘normally’… this made me not feel motivated to even begin preparing for a presentation at all… see how much an elementary classroom environment can damage a person’s confidence early on? sigh…

But I’ve grown since then… I’ve fought battles internally… by myself… I’ve tried to overcome this wall that was built from my childhood days.. before middle school, I’ve come to the realization that I can’t live like this forever… not all my future teachers will be as forgiving to my disabled presenting disposition as in elementary school… I even thought how can someone like me survive in this society if I can’t even stand up in front of a crowd without shaking and crying… I can’t live like this… this isn’t me at all…

This thought really got to me… so I challenged myself in grade 6 to present something… anything really, as long as I was passionate about it… and I thought ‘hey, this is the year of the chinese zodiac that everyone in this class was born under! Maybe I can introduce that to the class… people should be interested in something they can relate to, right?”…. and so I prepared… I made my own speech… I’ve even come up with games for the class to participate in and they even got candy for winning the little games I prepared…I had red pockets for people and clever questions to ask the class to see if they heard me…everything was well-thought out and planned…

But the only thing that hindered me was the fear… the shaking… my paralyzed stiff body… my little voice that couldn’t get out when I stood in front of people… it ruined my confidence… my performance… but surprisingly…people still clapped warmly for my effort… they saw me actually trying to overcome something… even if they couldn’t really understand my internal struggle. It was enough to soothe my heart… the accomplishment of such a feat… of facing my fear head-on relieved me… very much so, that from then on, I tried my best to continue to improve…

My voice got louder throughout middle school (once, the teacher even had to scold me for being loud and my classmates were surprised that it was someone like me that was so talkative…they never knew I could be so talkative because they never got to know me… they didn’t even try to talk to me much and just assumed that I was quiet and ‘mute’)… my fear grew smaller as I got more practice with presenting and trying to talk to more people… I met other people that faced similar challenges as me too.. and that helped me see that I’m not the only one struggling… that I’m not as alone as I thought… (this was comforting to someone whose small world consisted of only elementary school classmates and family everyday)

Present day, the fear is still there but I’ve come to accept it for what it is and not as something to stop me from presenting… I will still do it if I have to… because I’ve learnt that facing the fear head-on is what helps tear it down bit by bit… it’s like challenging something with the fact that you even tried to challenge it, is what makes you a winner already.

One day, I hope this fear becomes something fun for me to challenge… meaning I hope that one day I will come to look forward to facing this fear and present something unbelievably amazing that will astonish even my past elementary bullies. I want to make them not believe that someone like me…. some quiet, shy, mute girl that they labelled casually…. turned into something completely opposite to what they expected. I want to believe that I can do things that can astonish people into awe.

Indirectly, I have actually done so, many times with my early childhood art and university essay writing and amazingly, I’ve even managed to surprise myself with one presentation where I confidently presented an amazing interview to the class with passion and ended it with a good ‘bang’. (the topic motivated me because it was about introducing a friend in class and I met this amazing classmate that was actually an olympian figure skater in my own class! I just felt that I had to do something amazing for that person because she was worth the effort… haha) The way I structured that presentation was just inspiring to me because it made me feel like I can actually perform something amazing with total confidence; if I really wanted to and was motivated enough to do…haha, I liked it when I impacted my audience… that feeling that I’ve actually captured my audience’s attention and moved them in some way was breathtaking for someone like me… it might even become addicting if I ever get another chance to do something like that again.

I love creating things… at first it was drawing… I strived to improve myself to amaze even more people, then I tried creating well-structured presentations, afterwards I’ve tried building things like lego and puzzle houses (I think I have some affinity with making miniature things… maybe because I have small hands? haha)… now I’m trying to find a voice with my writing…I’m still an amateur so I’m still struggling here….as I’m not as fluent or articulate as I want to be…haha

Though once, I’ve surprised myself in philosophy class by receiving an A for my essay writing skills on my first try. I didn’t think I even wrote it that well, I’ve rushed to finish it in one night after an exam but the ideas were thought out before so that probably made it easier. Afterwards, i thought; “hey… maybe I’m actually not so bad at writing as I thought?”… and this motivated me to do better… to write more… to express myself in as many ways possible, so here I am…. writing random raw things for an anonymous blog that I impulsively created overnight… haha… I want to strive to improve and maybe come closer to my creativity though… so wish me luck! haha

Being creative makes me happy for some reason. The feeling of creating something amazing to astonish people really gets to me… it makes me feel warm and content inside… I love seeing the faces of people’s light up and smile because of something I did… even if they were laughing AT me, not with me… haha, maybe I have a little comedian inside of me that likes to entertain people? who knows… but what i do know is that I should continue to nurture whatever potential I have… even if it’s not much… I don’t want to give up on life… I want to feel like I’m actually doing something… I want to feel alive and impact the world in some way…. whether by something I created or by helping other people or just making someone smile… I want people to know that ‘I’ have actually lived… and that I AM somebody amazing too… not that quiet, shy, low confidence girl you used to know… i want to break free of that shell… and shine like the butterfly I believe that I was meant to be… one day, hopefully

Floating dream

I’m on an airplane… flying to another country… the pilot hears news about some national event on earth that became disastrous… he plans on landing the plane to the nearest land… he flies down… lands on top of a giant grey building… there are twin buildings…

suddenly I’m stuck in space… floating around universes, trying to find my planet… it’s space but not really space… the planets are like little balls around me and the stars are in the background… I see other people floating around like me… I see my mom too…. we are just drifting around looking for something but not really sure what we are looking for…. I wake up

Pleasant Italian encounter

Today I met an Italian while sitting on a bench at the mall. This old man came to sit on the same bench as me because he liked the bench that leaned against the wall. I offered to switch my seat with him because I had more of the wall behind me but he politely declined. Afterwards, we started an interesting and long conversation.

He started by explaining that he was waiting for his wife to finish shopping and I told him that I was waiting for my late friend. (Haha, we were both waiting for someone.)

Then we talked, mostly him talking actually, about how there’s fewer people at this mall today because of Black Friday. He told me that he comes here every Sunday to walk around with his wife but he gets tired easily because he’s getting old.

Somehow we managed to talk about his family, (how his wife is from the Philippines) and he even showed me a picture of his daughter. (Very beautiful woman I say.) She’s married now and around the same age as my mother. When his daughter travels, he says that he still pays for it because he said that when you die, you can’t take money with you so he might as well split it among his children while he still can. He also has three sons who are taking over his business in Canada.

Then, he went on talking about his almost 50 year old business. He told me that he builds apartment ventilation systems, furnace, and all the nitty gritty mechanisms behind building walls. He currently has over hundreds of men employed in his company and mentions that there are two hard working Chinese men who help build the stuff. He added that many of his Italian workers marry Chinese women because they were found to be ‘compatible.’ (I think he mentions this because I looked Chinese to him. Haha) He said that he almost sold his company once because he wanted to go back to Italy, but he’s now glad he didn’t because he would have been broke today if he did. His company is called ‘York Sheet Metal Ltd” and he tole me to look it up online when I have time. (I had no wifi connection at the moment.) He started his business in 1965 (He remembers dates very well) and came to Canada when he was about 17 years old. His first partner was a Scottish man. The Scottish man couldn’t pronounce his Italian name properly, ‘Vincenzo’, so he nicknamed him Jimmy instead and now everyone calls him Jimmy. Haha, he said that he should have be nicknamed Vincent instead because it’s more similar, but he says he’s fine with Jimmy now because it’s easy for people to remember. (Haha, he was quite funny.)

Our conversation was a bit choppy because we jumped from topic to topic, when filling the pauses in between, but he was nice enough to fill in the gaps with continuous conversation subjects.

He then taught me some basic Italian words such as ‘ciao’ for hi/bye, ‘buon giomo’ for good morning, ‘buon pomeriggio’ for good afternoon, ‘buona sera’ for good night, & ‘grazie’ for thank you. He even gave me some Italian chocolates with the word ‘baci’ on them, meaning ‘kiss’ in Italian. He says he carries them around to distribute to the nice people at the glasses shop he frequents. He had an extra one today so he gave it to me because he finds me nice too. (He’s such a sweet old man.) The chocolate had a quote inside: “Then, what is a kiss? ‘Tis a secret told to the mouth. -E. Rostand- #38” such a romantic. haha

Then we talked about his life in Italy. He said that Italy is shaped like a boot and that he lives right near the tip at the bottom of that boot. His house is by the ocean and he owns a boat there. He’s planning on going back to Italy in two weeks to celebrate Christmas there because the weather’s nicer, he finds.

After this nice long chat, his wife finished shopping for her makeup and came to pick him up. She said that she couldn’t find the foundation she wanted so they’ll have to go somewhere else. She thanked me for chatting with him but I say no need because it was fun talking to him. As he was about to leave, he turned and said jokingly that if we ever meet again then I can say that I have made an Italian boyfriend. (he’s such a flirt. Haha)

All in all, we had a very nice and long conversation going. I found him very sweet, nice and friendly, but a bit of a flirt too. Haha, but I learn a lot today; about Italy, him, his business and life. I find that you can always learn something new from everyone you meet in life. So yea, there you have it; my pleasant and interesting encounter with an Italian old man on a Sunday afternoon.